Henley smiled tightly. ‘We’ll let you get on.’
‘What do you think that was all about?’ Ramouter asked as they headed out of the room.
‘The man ran out as soon as that woman told him who we were,’ said Henley, looking up and down the hallway.
‘Do you think that’s what happened?’ Ramouter asked.
Henley spotted the man stepping out of an alcove in the corridor with a woman and then push through the double doors.
‘That’s exactly what happened. Stay here,’ Henley said. She took out her phone and jogged towards the woman who was walking towards her.
‘I’m sorry, this is my first time here and I was just in the group with that guy you were talking to, and he left his phone,’ Henley said, holding up her own phone. ‘He told me his name, but I’ve forgotten.’
‘Oh. You mean Larry,’ the woman said, turning around as though expecting him to still be there.
‘That’s it. Thank you so much. Hopefully I can catch him up. You don’t know his last name, do you?’ Henley asked gratefully.
‘Durant.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Henley said as she ran down the corridor.
‘Where did he go?’ Ramouter asked as he joined Henley outside on the steps of the community centre.
‘The number sixty-two,’ Henley said, pointing at the single decker bus that had just pulled away from the bus stop. ‘It was Durant. Larry Durant. I think we’ve been looking at this case all wrong,’ said Henley. ‘We’ve been looking at outside vigilantes, people with no links to Fox-Carnell and the others but what if it’s a little bit closer to home?’
33
Henley stood at her front garden gate watching her house and wondering if it was still a place of safety. She’d done everything to protect her family refuge, made herself ex-directory and had no social media presence to speak of, yet Sian Fox-Carnell had found her. She looked over her shoulder at the street. A jogger ran by and the family who lived three doors down – the young twins dressed in their judo gis – walked home. Life looked normal but Henley knew that it was an illusion. Sian Fox-Carnell wasn’t the only one to breach the wall and cross her boundary. Peter Olivier had been the first one to show her that she and her family were not untouchable. Henley could feel sharp splinters pushing through the soft flesh of her palm as she gripped the garden gate. Most of the time she could convince herself that she was ok and that she had survived but that wasn’t the truth. Her PTSD wasn’t gone but was just buried in a shallow grave in her body. The anxiety was silent to the external world, but it was like a pneumatic drill in her chest, she was irritable, the hours she slept were getting shorter and she wanted to hide, to avoid the world. The pace of her heart was erratic, her breathing laboured, as she approached her front door.
‘For god’s sake,’ she said under her breath, her hand shaking too much to unlock the door. She jerked back as the lock pulled away from her and the door opened. She looked up to see Rob standing in front of her with a tea-towel over his shoulder.
‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’ he asked.
Her answer was swallowed by choke-filled tears as she fell against him.
‘I didn’t know you were going to be home. I thought you’d changed your Manchester days this week,’ Henley said as she walked back into the warm kitchen an hour later. Despite the hot shower, her body ached with exhaustion.
‘I texted you.’ Rob took a shepherd’s pie out of the oven and placed it on the counter. ‘There was another change of plans at work. The journalist who was covering the crypto conference at the Excel this week is sick, so I said I’d cover it.’
Henley reached for her bag that Rob had hung on the back of the chair. ‘Crypto? I thought you said it’s all a scam.’ She took out her phone, scrolled through the text messages including another text from Eloise, until she found the message that Rob had sent her at 11.14 a.m..
‘It is all a scam,’ Rob said, dishing up.
‘How did you know that I was at the door?’ She was grateful that Rob had decided to come home early and cook comfort food.
‘The doorbell app. I keep forgetting to turn off notifications for motion. I looked and I could see your face. It brought back memories of when you were home on sick leave just after we found out you were pregnant. You looked broken. As though the world was about to come crashing down on you.’
It wasn’t lost on Henley that Rob had avoided saying ‘When you were on sick leave after you were stabbed.’ She knew that time had been just as painful for him as it had been for her.
‘The problem with my job is that death isn’t the end, it’s the beginning,’ Henley said. ‘And it’s never straightforward. When we’re dealing with a person’s death it comes with all of these complexities and emotions that aren’t even your own. You don’t have room for yourself, and you can’t close the door at 5.30 p.m. and leave it all behind. That person’s death follows you.’
Rob ate silently for a few minutes, the news drifting from the TV next door. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way for you,’ he said.
‘Rob, don’t—’
‘No, don’t worry. I’m not going to start banging on about you leaving the SCU or the force. We’ve gone up and down that road and we end up in the same place. A stalemate. I’m just saying I want you to know that you’re not on your own. I’m your safe place.’
‘I’m sorry for making our marriage hard.’ Henley reached out and touched his face.
